'Call Me By Your Name': Timothée Chalamet is breakout star of 2017

Every once in a while an actor seems to come out of nowhere with a string of standout performances in back-to-back films that establish them as a major screen presence that is here to stay.

A few years back Jessica Chastain had a year like that, and in 2017, it's unquestionably Timothée Chalamet who has announced himself as that new special actor to watch.

First, with the crowd-pleasing dramedy Lady Bird, he has a great supporting turn as a self-important musician who seduces the protagonist.

But it's in Call Me By Your Name that he has his great star turn. He singlehandedly makes the sprawling romantic film a must-see, and he deserves Best Actor consideration even though he's barely in his 20s.

Call Me By Your Name is a bit of a slow boil and it is hampered tremendously by its ubiquitous trailer which gives away much of the major plot points of the first half of the film. Not unlike Carol, this is a film about a tentative gay romance that takes quite a while to become actualized.

And yet, Chalamet brilliantly calibrates his character's sexual awakening in a believable, natural, yet-never-less-than riveting way. He never really has a big scene or Oscar moment, just several heartbreakingly honest line deliveries and physical moments that really keep the film afloat even when it lags.

Meanwhile, for the first time since his breakout performance in The Social Network back in 2010, a film has finally figured out how to utilize the uber handsome Armie Hammer. He's great as the object of Chalamet's affection, an older grad student studying under a brilliant Michael Schulberg as Chalamet's father, a hyper-intellectual archaeology professor.

They are living a fairly decadent life in 1983 Italy, and the movie revels in its gorgeous locales and the pale-skinned bodies of its protagonists. During its first hour or so, I worried the film was too literate and pretty for its own good, but Chalamet's off-beat performance and surprising frankness kept me intrigued.

In the second half of the film, its drama and romantic longing really take hold and what could be construed as a semi-conventional plot (albeit heightened by the fact that a gay romance is at the center of it) evolves into something considerably more interesting.

Director Luca Guadagnino has a beautiful eye and ear for time and place. And art house icon James Ivory, who has penned so many of this specific kind of austere dramas, at 89 years old (!), manages to believably convey a very intimate, complex relationship between essentially a boy and an older younger man, without it being too uncomfortable but with it being awkward enough to feel like more than a fantasy sequence.

It builds to probably a few climaxes too many -- and its languid pacing will likely alienate audiences conditioned to less internal conflict -- but the final stretch of the movie is just devastating and the final shot is one of the most lovely and arresting I've seen in quite some time.

My only hope is that Chalamet can sustain this run and mature into a great leading man and not go the way of so many promising young actors who cash in too quick and squander their talents.